When's a closed vote closed?

In our state house, voting games with the machines are relatively common, played by whichever faction controls the speaker's seat. Our legislators, of course, play games with their electronic votes as well. On close, highly contested votes, opponents will often temporarily vote "yes" so that it will look like the bill is passing, only to switch their vote to "no" just before the machine closes. Since in many such close votes, one or two legislators have promised their party/faction to vote "yes" only if their vote is absolutely needed to pass the bill (they'll be loyal to the party, but their own district would want the bill to pass), this little game sometimes does impact whether the bill passes or fails. The game only works when the bill's opponents control the speaker's chair. If the proponents of the bill control the speaker's chair, then they'll cut off the voting the very instant they have enough green lights for passage, and the opponents who are recorded as having voted "yes" are in deep doo-doo and start screeching FOUL! at the top of their lungs. Nobody in the know takes the screeching seriously, because they know that that guy was playing games with the system, too.

But I think the practice in the House is a bit different, more orderly, with less discretion supposedly vested in the presiding officer to determine when to shut down the machines. I read somewhere this morning that a leading Dem. had apologized for the maneuver and stated that he understood the GOP's anger on the issue.

I totally agree with you, actually, Rafique. At the moment, it is merely asserted that it happened, not established. The video posted supposedly "of the events" does nothing to establish what took place. What's driven this story thusfar is the accounts of Representatives and staffers (on both sides), who surely shouldn't be considered a disinterested (and thus reliable) source. But there is a reliable source: the whole thing was carried live, on CSPAN. I want to see the unedited video posted to youtube, not just a snippet.

With that said, I don't want to minimize the import if this turns out to be true. It's one thing to scrub a planned vote, or to call one on short notice, or to play with the schedule. That sort of procedural chicanery has defined (if not exactly distinguished) the House for over two centuries. As I understand it, what we're talking about here isn't a matter of when votes are held. Another procedural trick often used is that once the vote has opened, voting periods are declared to be minimum voting periods, and the trick is that after the minimum period has expired, the presiding officer will hold open the vote until the majority has enough votes to prevail, and will at that moment slam down thee gavel and bring the vote to an end. But as I understand it, what we're talking about here isn't a matter of when votes end.

Rather, unless I've misread the story, the allegation here isn't that the timing of a vote was manipulated, or that the end of the voting period was manipulated, or even (as I've seen asserted in comments elsewhere) confusion about how many votes were cast, but much more specifically, that votes were allowed after the presiding officer had gavelled the vote to a close.

Unfortunately, Rep. Cantor has chosen to inflame the story by intermingling the procedural question with thee substance of the bill. I'm sure he's angry, but procedural questions ought to be discussed dispassionately, without regard to the content of the bill at hand, and the right way to accomplish that is to put the full, unedited video out there for all to see.

David Freddoso has this account over at The Corner. It seems pretty balanced, and basically says there was some vote gaming on both sides, just as I described in my earlier post. Here's the bottom line, as he sees it. I suspect he's got it about right:

The Democrats' actions last night are comparable to what Tom DeLay did to keep the vote open and pass the prescription drug bill back in 2003, but actually a bit worse. It was shady enough back then for the Republican leadership to "persuade" members to change their votes while keeping the vote open over the course of three hours. To change the actual vote total takes that a step further.

There won't be any lasting political impact on either party for this. Despite how the GOP will sell it, it's a complicated parliamentary issue that the public won't pay much attention to. If anybody loses in the public's eye at all, it'll be the Dems, simply because it's one more point where the GOP can point out that they're not behaving any better or more open than the GOP behaved when they were in power.

The gavel falling, however, is a huge deal. Gaming when that happens is one thing. But once it has happened, that's it. Acta est fabula, plaudite! The flag drops, the race has begun. The axe hits the block, the prisoner has been executed. The gavel falls, the vote is over. If the version of events I noted above turns out to be true, this is a huge deal, one that totally undercuts the legitimacy of the bill, and presumably provides a test case for the limits of the enrolled bill rule.